Daily Archives: April 14, 2013

Today I am sharing a scene from my speculative fiction novel, Life in Slake Patch. Young men of the resistant group, known as the Tribe have been captured and secured in a grain store.

Woken by sudden shouting, horse’s hooves and cries of help, I knew something was terribly wrong. Pulling on a pair of britches quickly, I raced out of the long house to see huge flames leaping into the early morning sky. The grain store was on fire and the young men were still locked inside. The heat hit me as I rushed toward the store. Men were lined up between the large water troughs and the burning building, passing buckets of water back and forth as quickly as they could.

Suddenly there was a deafening crash as the store roof collapsed. Screams pierced the air then all at once there was silence. Shocked faces were bathed in the gold of the flames, no one moved for several moments then hectically the bucket line restarted. It took over an hour before the flames were quenched sufficiently for the chard logs to be pulled away, exposing the blackened bodies of the seven members of the Tribe. One by one they are laid out then wrapped in hessian and taken by wagon to the spirit garden out to the east. Each wagon accompanied by the father of the young man within, riding on horseback with black cloths shrouding them, as was the custom.

The Tollst residents watched the procession leave in stunned silence. Death was usually through old age and occasionally an accident but this was an unprecedented event, something that would make its mark on everyone there that day. Merchant Folke stood at the gate and as we watched the last wagon past through he asked us all to say the death chant together.

Today’s word for those who would like to know is Promontory – definition: a high point of land sticking out into the sea or over a lowland. I could have found a scene where Evan travelled to a similar place but chose not to. However, I am sharing a wonderful scenic view instead.